It is common in the art of sheet material processing to collate sheet material, such as paper sheets, inserts, envelopes and the like, and insert the sheet material into a mailing envelope in such a manner as to present the mailing address on the sheet material in the window of the mailing envelope. Although sheet material inserted into mailing envelopes can be unfolded, a folding system is frequently utilized to fold the sheet material into a half, triple or quarter folded form which is delivered or advanced to a raceway for conveying the folded sheet material to an envelope inserting machine.
Various apparatuses exist in the prior art for advancing folded sheet material to a machine raceway. To date, apparatuses for advancing folded sheet material to the machine raceway have typically had to be mounted on the front or rear of the machine raceway depending upon the address position and the type of fold.
Despite the existence of prior art apparatuses for advancing sheet material to an envelope inserting machine raceway, there remains much room for improvement in the art, particularly for an apparatus and method for selectively inverting, staging and selectively advancing or diverting sheet material prior to delivery of the sheet material to an envelope inserting machine raceway.